Words…Happiness as a Role vs. True Happiness

“How are you?”  Just great.  Couldn’t be better.”  True or False?

In many cases, happiness is a role people play, and behind the smiling façade, there is a great deal of pain.  Depression, breakdowns, and overreactions are common when unhappiness is covered up behind a smiling exterior and brilliant white teeth, when there is denial, sometimes even to one’s self, that there is much unhappiness.

“Just fine” is a role the ego plays more commonly in America than in certain other countries where being and looking miserable is almost the norm and therefore more socially acceptable.

Be aware that what you think, to a large extent, creates the emotions that you feel.  See the link between your thinking and your emotions.  Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.

Don’t seek happiness.  If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.  Happiness is ever elusive, but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is, rather than making stories about it.  Unhappiness covers up your natural state of well-being and inner peace, the source of true happiness.

Source: Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” (the Life Purpose Bible).